Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Review: The Iceman

The Iceman is a new movie based on the life of Richard Kuklinksi. Before there was a movie, there was a very good book about the man. The book tells the story of Kuklinski, a heartless mob hitman who lied, cheated, and killed for money and his family. The eeriest aspect about the book was that it felt like it was a movie, with the heartless way Kuklinski would kill for a couple thousand here and there, yet it really happened. I thought this would be the perfect story for a movie adaptation--it could basically be told as is. Unfortunately, the creators of the Iceman movie decided otherwise. The film deviates too far from the book in order to introduce some Hollywood flair. It feels like the writers of the movie added too much drama to a story that didn't need it. They changed Kuklinski's character from a ruthless, cold tactician to a sociopath. They added extra emotion, unnecessary scenes meant to add to the drama of the story, extra family dilemmas, and an entire sequence of events that never happened. And, they shortened many important aspects of the story in order to fit it into an hour and a 45 minutes. This combination causes the movie to feel disjointed and to not make much sense. The plot jumps around as they try to hit the main points of the story without laying much groundwork. In the end, it just feels off. The book is a great story, one that should be read to really understand how heartless Kuklinksi was. Please read the book and

Don't see it.

Lee:I never read the book and knew little about Kuklinski's life, so I was ignorant of the added events until after the movie. For me, it was an average mafia tale revolving around an interesting person, but there's an odd lack of character development. In the end, I felt I knew only slightly more about the Iceman than I did prior to the movie. Those familiar with the true story or Anthony Bruno's book, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer, will probably be very disappointed, but everyone else shouldRent it.